Re: What's left over.

Patrick Finnegan
2002-11-01T13:55:23Z

On Fri, 1 Nov 2002, Craig I. Hagan wrote:

> > Talk is cheap.
> >
> > I've not seen a _single_ bug-report with a fix that attributed the
> > existing LKCD patches. I might be more impressed if I had.
> >
> > The basic issue is that we don't put patches in in the hope that they will
> > prove themselves later. Your argument is fundamentally flawed.
>
> comment from userspace:
>
> I'm going to have to side with Linus here despite my desire to see LKCD
> merged.

I'll have to disagree with what you're saying, because:

> However, we need to show him the money. This means:
>
> * making sure that the patches are kept up to date

They are being kept up to date, and aparently have been for some time.

> * keep the LKCD patches in the list/community spotlight in a positive
> manner ("please test this!", or "please use this when
> looking for help debugging a system problem"). Perhaps
> a 2.5.x-lkcd bk tree or something like that.

Umm, and the difference between maintaining a set of patches per kernel
version and something using bitkeeper (or heaven forbid, CVS)? Even
Linus didn't starting using source code management until somewhat
recently.

> * make documentation/HOWTO's available for folks so that
> they'll know how to generate a crashdump
> and run a some utilities against it to generate
> a synopsis which can be submitted for debugging

Have you seen http://lkcd.sf.net ? They have that there. I've
successfully walked through their well-written tutorials and produced
crashdumps from machines that have failed.

> * most important: squash a whole lot of bugs with
> said dumps!

Perhaps people are but they're not posting the bugs to the list...

> If it becomes apparent through empirical data that crash dumps are a useful
> tool, I'm sure that Linus will become far more amenable. Until then, lets let
> him handle all of his other work which needs to get done.

The data is there, perhaps not for Linux, but for other Unixes -
including ones like the BSDs. Crashdumps are an invaluable resource for
finding bugs that involve things like hardware that doesn't conform
exactly to specs, or deadlocks, or...

Pat
--
Purdue Universtiy ITAP/RCS
Information Technology at Purdue
Research Computing and Storage